tantovstengoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: tanto is a adverb, tengo is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tanto” is an adverb and “tengo” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#242
“tanto” frequency rank
#46,588
“tengo” frequency rank
46830
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tanto tengo
Definition em tal quantidade ou grau primeira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo tener

Letter map: tanto vs tengo

Shared letters muted; letters that set tanto and tengo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
tanto
5 ch
tengo

Part-of-speech tell for tanto / tengo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tanto is anadverb and tengoaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46830, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tanto is recorded at frequency rank #242, classified as anadv, pronounced /ˈtɐ̃.tu/. tengo is at rank #46,588, tagged as averb.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 46830, this pair ranks #18,478 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tanto vs tengo

Shared letters: not. Private to "tanto": a. Private to "tengo": eg.

"tanto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "tengo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tantoatnto · tannto · tanot · tantto · tatno · tnato · ttanto
  • tengoetngo · tegno · tenggo · tenngo · tenog · tnego · ttengo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tanto" and "tengo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tanto" is an adverb and "tengo" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "tanto" or "tengo"?
"tanto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #242 in our Portuguese list, against #46,588 for "tengo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "tanto" and "tengo". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tanto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tengo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,478 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tanto" and "tengo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teco vs tengo". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #18,478 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list